The World Today

By Tahir Hamid

These are strange days and times in
the world. I feel that an increased sense of loneliness pervades
societies today. People have become excessively introvert. You
rarely know who lives next door and your neighbors really come
and meet you. This is especially true in Pakistan within posh
areas. Unlike European nations and in USA where strangers often
exchange courtesies wherever they may be, this is not so when it
comes to the upper cadres of society in Pakistan.

Even relatives meet one another
when they celebrate the occasion of Eid. It is much like how
Americans celebrate the occasion of 'Thanksgiving'. Other than
that relatives hardly visit one another. People are more busy in
their children and watching television rather than interacting
with one another or exercising. It is work and back for the
employed and to school and back for young children. Children are
hooked onto the web or to playing games on the computer.

Social websites such as 'Facebook'
and numerous dating sites are places where individuals seek to
mingle and interact with one another. Marriage websites are being
utilized to find suitable matches. There are numerous friendship
websites as well.

It is this lack of affiliation and
interaction amongst people that is giving rise to various mental
illnesses. It is this lack of feeling part of group or society,
it is this lack of feeling loved or liked, it is the feeling of
being isolated that drives so many to insanity.

If people were able to empathize
with the poor and needy, if married people were willing to take
care of their elderly parents, if we could steer clear of judging
people, if we could learn to treat one another with kindness and
love, if society could learn to help the sick, the elderly and
the weak and poor, if the employed helped the unemployed, etc.
our societies today would have been so much better.

We choose to spend our lives today
feeding our Self and our Ego. Each human wants to be loved and to
feel important. Every individual dreams and works for earning
unlimited wealth. The inability to do so creates an anxiety
within us. There is a fear at the back of our mind which suggests
to us that what you have is insufficient. No matter how much
wealth you may have, at the end of the day there is an urge to
make more; there is the constant thought that it is not
enough.

Therefore we are all today lost in
a rat race which is mostly about earning loads of money and about
the monthly paycheck. It is that paycheck which is essential for
our survival and for our ability to follow a certain lifestyle.
More often than not it is this paycheck and job that guarantees
us an ability to enjoy our lives. Therefore making money is a
very important priority in our lives; the benefits of a good job
and wealth cannot be undermined. And yet wealth alone cannot
guarantee you happiness. What is wealth if you don't have the
health to enjoy it? What is wealth if it can't stop death?

There was a moment when people used
to cherish morality and look down upon immorality. There was a
time when people used to look upto people who were honest and
sincere. In our Pakistani society, it is unfortunate that virtues
such as honesty, truth and sincerity are not common. Each man is
at daggers with the other. It is unfortunate that backbiting,
lying and hypocrisy are common. Relations are weighed in terms of
the benefits derived.

It is unfortunate to find that
today in a so called Islamic State, more and more parents are
being left in the care of old retirement homes. This is a
tradition which is more common in USA and other European nations.
Whilst God commands believers to look after their parents in old
age as they cared for them whilst they were children, it is
strange to find that more and more people across the globe are
depositing their parents in old retirement homes.

The world has become a place where
people of different castes, religious sects and religions harbor
various prejudices against another; unfounded prejudices that
perpetrated the ancient Crusades, that fueled the Spanish
inquisition, that have fueled wars, that continue to fuel
sectarianism and hate amongst Jews, Christians, Muslims and
Hindus.

According to the Holy Quran and
other Holy Scriptures such as the Old Testament and Taurat, God
only differentiates amongst people on the basis of their actions
and deeds. Those who remember God and submit to His Will and
commands are those on the righteous path and as for those who
disobey Him are on the path that the Devil impresses them to do
so. Hate, anger, spite, greed, envy, arrogance and other negative
and evil thoughts are all the Devils way. It is his objective to
lead man away from calm, peace, security and love which all come
from God.

Man is not perfect. He continues to
sin and for some the evil and the sins that they indulge in are
not sins. Infact many of the sins have been introduced in our way
of life as modernism. Gambling, feeding on interest, the practice
of magic, homicide, suicide, genocide, spite, backbiting,
adultery, homosexuality, the worship of anyone other than the
Creator, being disobedient to ones parents, vulgarity, the
intermingling of sexes, etc are not allowed by God and yet we
have amended His Commandments to suit what we feel is suitable
and what is not suitable.

There is unrest in our societies
because the evils that we sanctify as modernism spawns more evil.
It is the culture of letting evil persist and its tolerance that
spawns more evil.

Look at our societies today. Man
kills man without mercy. There are child abusers, pedophiles,
rapists, murderers, assassins, mafias, pimps, human traffickers,
prostitutes, transvestites, black magicians, gangs, etc. USA has
the highest rates of homicide in the world and yet arms and
ammunition are openly sold for criminals to use. There has to be
a war fought against human trafficking and drug traffickers on a
global scale to rid the world of evil men and women persisting in
such heinous crimes.

Instead of continuing to sell or
buy weopans of mass destruction, nations should be working
together to eliminate terrorists, mafias, drug traffickers and
human traffickers wherever they maybe or to combat global
poverty. Rather than work against one another, nations should
perhaps work with one another for finding ways and means to bring
peace and prosperity in the world. However as it is there are
certain nations in the world where the rulers are more concerned
about cloak and dagger games and of global conquest.

Institutions such as the United
Nations are impotent. The five nations with a veto power
especially the United States have repeatedly vetoed any action
against Israel when they murder innocent men, women and children
in Palestine. For punishing Saddam Hussein and his merry men,
multiple UN sanctions were put on Iraq. As food and medicine were
not allowed into Iraq, 500,000 young babies and children died.
This was a callous act and yet the entire world kept
quiet.

Such unjustified acts of
callousness fuels hate in the mind of Muslims against the United
States and the Jews. The Muslims had no love for Saddam Hussein
or his regime but the act of bombing civilians and utilizing
sanctions to kill millions was an act of barbarism.

Global Peace cannot be bought about
when those capable of restoring peace don't want it. Obviously
some nations rely upon creation of wars to fuel the sale of their
weopans and tools of mass destruction. Unless there are
conflicts, who would buy weopans and ammunition. When tyrants
placed by USA within different nations dare to deviate from the
policies dictated by Washington, they are either assassinated or
punished.

Civil war was planned and
instigated by the Americans in Libya. Obviously Qaddaffi had been
one man who had always opposed US interests in Middle East and
Africa. He had been the one man who had called for the African
States to unite and for the Muslims to unite. The unity of
Muslims does not figure well for USA.

However two hands are needed to
clap and most of the restlessness in the world stems from
dictatorships and democracies under the rule of weak or cruel men
who are tyrannical. Countries today don't need democracy or
dictatorships; they need men and women who are sincere and
capable; capable of addressing the multiple issues and problems
that their countries face. Unfortunately there are many nations
across the globe where governments and institutions seek to
torture or murder their own people. Uprisings and rebellions are
quelled. Often the country's intelligence is used for monitoring
dissenters and apprehending them or killing them in cold blood.
This was what the SAVAK did in Iran under the rule of Raza Shah
Pahlvi. The SAVAK had been trained by the CIA.

The mass genocide of Jews under
Hitler is a prime example of how cruel rulers can be. Similarly
the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs and the massacre of
Tutsis by Hutus are more examples of what hatred can cause and
perpetrate.

It is unfortunate to find that
monetary institutions such as the IMF are guilty of forwarding
loans to different nations but alas these loans come attached
with policies directed by Washington, USA; policies which have
wrecked a lot of economies. Hence there is a need by nations to
resist borrowing from monetary institutions that seek to weaken
economies. This is what the famous economist STIGLITZ has
mentioned in his book 'Globalization and its discontents'.

Imagine monetary institutions being
utilized by governments to destabilize global economies.
Corruption and lack of unity amongst people in a country is also
utilized by scavenging nations seeking to wreac havoc in such
nations.

At other times, the few people that
own wealth and power in a poor nation seek to weaken national
institutions and are beyond the laws of the country. Quite often
the political parties are manned by goons seeking to misuse their
tenures in power to loot the national exchequer. In Pakistan,
the present government was responsible for corruption worth 94
Billion Dollars in its first four years. And this is a country
where 60 percent of a population of 190 million people lives on
less than 2 dollars a day. In short the rulers themselves
continue to perpetrate conditions that weaken the country each
day.

It is the unequal distribution of
wealth and power and the increased disparity amongst the rich and
the poor that fuels the source of discontent in nations and
across the globe.

In society today, men and women
have become servants to their circumstances and their desires. It
is within societies and nations that worship wealth and
materialism whilst looking away from Gods Commands that moral
degeneration takes place. And in an atmosphere that is conducive
to immorality and other social evils, human values of humility,
kindness, charity and empathy gradually disappear.

When human values erode, those
things that have been mentioned to be a sin within the Bible, the
Quran or in the Taurat become common amongst men and women in
different societies. Murder, rape, divorce, hate, jealousy, envy,
spite, gambling, child pornography, sexual abuse, pedophilia, etc
become common. Lust and selfishness are gradually replacing love;
the love for everything that is good. Friendships and relations
sadly revolve about mutual benefits that can be extracted. Human
goodness and decency is being replaced by ego and arrogance.
There is a general lack of tolerance in the world today. It is
this intolerance of other people's perspectives, views, cultures
and opinions of life that often fuel sectarian, human violence
and a disregard for other nations and cultures.

All religions sent by God to the
Prophets over the course of time, speak about the remembrance of
God, of goodness, about decency, about love, of mercy, of
charity, of tolerance, of humility, etc. The folly of religious
bias and antagonism is therefore naïve. God states that Judgement
of human beings is His to do and not for individuals to decide.
And yet each man and woman continually seeks to judge others. We
look for perfection in others when we may ourselves be imperfect.
There is a lack of self-introspection. Many of us seek to justify
ourselves being correct and others wrong when the opposite may be
correct. There are so many times when we sit and choose to back
bite about others. We don't seem to have a control over our
tongue. If we could learn to think and then say something, we can
all perhaps save ourselves from indulging in sins such as lying,
backbiting, cursing, from saying words that hurt the emotions of
others and much more. So many times we lose our anger and lose
control of ourselves and the situation. There are so many things
that are said and done that have a negative impact on our
friends, colleagues and surroundings.

Today in the world, there are some
people who worship the devil, some who still worship idols and
multiple Gods, then there are so many hypocrites and liars, there
are those who still worship the sun, the moon and the stars,
there are also those who apply some Commandments of God to their
lives and they mix it with a lot of acts that God has forbidden.
There are those who don't believe in a single Creator and
continue to fool themselves into believing that this entire
creation of the Universe and that which is contained in it is a
chance.

FACT:
No one is entirely happy.

FICTION:
Rich people have no worries.

FICTION:
Money alone is the cause of your happiness.

FACT:
It is being at peace with what you are, who you are and
spirituality

that
brings inner happiness and peace.

FICTION:
Education brings enlightenment

FACT:
Education provides you with monetary security

FACT:
Inner strength of a person is bought about by faith

FICTION:
Faith is baloney

FICTION:
The rich are the best people in the sight of God

FACT:
They will be more accountable to the God as compared to
the

Poor

FICTION:
It is negative self-suggestion when you think you are not
important

FACT:
That you have been gifted with life in itself suggests
your

Importance to God.

FICTION: Dressing up in skimpy outfits
would attract men to me

FACT: More often than not it will
attract the eyes of perverts or men who

prey upon women with weak morals

FICTION: Governments want to bring about
peace and order

FACT: Powerful nations create war
and disorder. These wars are needed

by them to sell weapons of mass
destruction which will generate

billions in revenues for their
nations. It will also provide them the

opportunity of destroying countries
for placing their cronies in

power, for rebuilding the country,
for latching onto resources

Including oil, gas and what not.

FICTION: The tolerance of immorality in
society and evil in all its forms is an

enlightened society.

FACT: Allowing evil to persist in
a society or nation will eventually lead to